In the form of Inuit mythology in vogue among the Iñupiat of north-western Alaska, Tuluŋigraq was a god createdAsatchaq 1992, p. 6 by the primordial aana (or "grandmother")Asatchaq 1992, p. 5 goddess. (cf. the god Tulugaak of the eastern Inuit) When the world was in perpetual darkness of night, he stole the skin-wrapped sun, and with his beak released it from the skin: it flew upward, creating daylight.Asatchaq 1992, p. 9 By wrestling her, Tuluŋigraq had acquiredAsatchaq 1992, p. 7 as wife an uiḷuaqtaq, a 'woman who had refused to marry'. (With this theme, Lowenstein comparedAsatchaq 1992, p. 11 the shamanic experience wherein "the shaman wrestles with" the goddess Nuliajuk, as recorded by Rasmussen (1930) for the Iglulik.) [comparative note: just as Nuliajuk was the goddess controlling seals, so likewise the goddess Thetis of Hellenic myth was acquired as wife by the mortal hero Pēleus, by means of his wrestling her, after he had killed Phokos ('Seal').] He had also harpooned a strange sea-animal: "The animal came up dry. It rose in the water. It was dry land. It was Tikiġaq."Asatchaq 1992, p. 8 [comparative: just as Tikiġaq is located at the tip of a promontory,as indicated on the maps at Asatchaq 1992, pp. xix, xxvii so likewise it was at a promontory (Sepias) that Pēleus wrestled Thetis; there, just as Tuluŋigraq was blackened with puiya, so likewise was Pēleus blackened with sepia.]
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